MFA appeals to Committee for Prevention of Torture

In his address, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin urged to give a legal assessment of the occupying authorities’ actions with regard to Ilmi Umerov in Crimea.

KYIV (QHA) -

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin addressed the President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture Mykola Gnatovskyy to give a legal assessment of the occupation authorities’ actions with regard to the Mejlis Deputy Chairman Ilmi Umerov and other activists in Crimea, according to his Twitter account.

“I have addressed the President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture to provide legal assessment of the actions of the occupying authorities in Crimea with regard to Ilmi Umerov,” Pavlo Klimkin wrote.

In his address, the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister noted that today the Crimea turned into the peninsular of violence and fear, where injustice, terror, intimidation, kidnapping and torture are dominating.

“Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who openly have supported the territorial integrity of Ukraine remain in a particularly vulnerable position. There are a number of persons, who suffer from politically motivated persecution by the Russian occupying authorities and remain in places of detention without any control of the respective international mechanisms,” the report says.

Moreover, Pavlo Klimkin urged to assess the use of punitive psychiatry against Umerov.

Ilmi Umerov was illegally confined in a psychiatric hospital of Simferopol for three weeks to undergo involuntary inspection. He was released on Wednesday, September 7, and announced his intention to continue to defend his rights.

The criminal case against the Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Ilmi Umerov was launched at the request of the so-called Public Prosecutor’s Office of Crimea. The prosecution alleges that in March 2016, Umerov being in the territory of Ukraine, publicly called to "violate the territorial integrity of Russia" during his live interview with ATR TV Channel.